Performance Processors for the Square Kilometer Array telescope
| The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) is a radio telescope in development which will have a total collecting area of approximately one square kilometre. It will operate over a wide range of frequencies and its size will make it 50 times as sensitive as any other radio instrument. It will require very high performance central computing engines and long-haul links with a capacity greater than the current Internet traffic of Europe. |
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High performance processors are required close to the sensors, where they will perform data reduction to select the frequencies and directions of interest. The 250 Aperture Arrays will use 300 processor boards each, so the 75,000 processors will need to be low power and low cost. ClearSpeed IP provides the best available performance per watt for the lowest processor cost, while still providing software programmability that allows continued algorithm development.
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The central processing facility also requires the next generation high performance computing hardware to provide 30 Peta FLOPS for 30 Mega Watts. HPC systems using the ClearSpeed CSX700 processor already provide over 800 Mega FLOPS per watt of total system power.
Download the presentation given to the SKA group by ClearSpeed.ClearSpeed is the clear choice for large scale systems such as SKA where a combination of performance, efficiency and ease of deployment and upgrade is required. ClearSpeed provides a common platform for High Performance Compute and close to sensor environments, which ease processing partitioning, provides superior efficiency and ease of use, whilst reducing development time and cost of the system.